Watching Sgt. Richard Dugal as he spoke to the media about the Ottawa police needing help finding a sexual predator who might be responsible for as many as 10 attacks was slightly disconcerting.

And it wasn’t just Dugal’s message that was disturbing. It was the Ottawa investigator’s resemblance to one of two artist’s renderings of the suspect. Of course, no one would phone in an anonymous tip about a police officer. Or would they?

Deciding when to report a suspicion is a tough call. It’s one thing to report a niggling question a quasi-stranger you saw somewhere in your neighbourhood. But what about reporting your wariness about a co-worker? Teammate? Friend or family member?

Dugal concedes that the closer your relationship is with the person you’re concerned about, the tougher it is to pick up the phone. But the officer rejects the idea that most of us fall prey to a culture of not ratting out people we know, a concept some of us were introduced to in kindergarten when we were told not to “tattle” on our classmates.

“When it’s important enough, people don’t hesitate,” Dugal says.

Case in point: Police have already received more than 100 calls related to a suspect who police believe sexually assaulted and choked three women, and possibly attacked seven more.

But Dugal says it’s vital people keep calling in.

“What we don’t want is people to say, ‘They got so many tips, they must have the information that I have,’” says Dugal.

And so, in an effort to help people overcome their qualms about making that call, the police force is trying to make the process of how it deals with anonymous tips as transparent as possible without revealing investigation techniques.

The first thing to remember, says Dugal, is that the caller’s identification will always be kept confidential.

Second: Know that the person you’re reporting is not in trouble — at least not automatically.

“It’s a very professional approach,” says Dugal of the police’s initial contact with the person who’s been reported. “It’s methodical, it’s legal, it’s respective of the person’s Charter rights. It’s not the pressure tactics that maybe you used to see, the old headlamp in the face sort of thing.”

And not everyone will be called in for an interview immediately, and some maybe never.

Police take dozens and dozens of tips and prioritize them, in part by the quality of the information. Does the caller have specific reasons for suspecting a certain individual, information that also coincides with data police already have? Then that tip would probably be dealt with earlier than one about a stranger who resembles one of the artist’s renderings spotted in a shopping mall. There are other issues that are taken into account that Dugal didn’t want to get into, but they would include factors like prior arrests or charges.

That sort of process makes sense, of course, but doesn’t always lead to a quick arrest. While many hard-to-solve crimes are ultimately worked out with help from a public appeal, it often takes police years to work their way through a long list of tips. Take the Ardeth Wood case. The same day the 27-year-old woman’s body was found in 2003, an anonymous caller told police the killer could be Chris Myers. But other “persons of interest” also fit the physical description of the suspect or resembled the composite sketch police released, men with histories of sexual assaults. Myers “only” had a history of drug trafficking and uttering a death threat. The result? It took Ottawa police almost two years to arrest Myers, and with the North Bay police force’s help at that.

Still, amassing bits and pieces of information from the public is the police force’s best chance at catching the sexual predator on the loose in Ottawa. The worst thing you could do, according to Dugal, is to think that what you have to report is too trifling. You might not have the smoking gun, but you might have a small piece of a complex puzzle. Perhaps a description or the time you saw someone in a certain location matches some other piece of information police have. The point is, you don’t know what the police know.

Or as Dugal put it, “We really are looking for a needle in a haystack. We need people to point us to the right part of the haystack.”

As for your hesitancy in reporting someone you might know well, Dugal says he understands the instinct. Would you feel guilty if your tip led to a friend’s being hauled in to talk to police only to be found innocent? Very likely.

But consider the alternative. How much worse would you feel if you suspected something but said nothing? Even more unthinkable, what if the criminal attacked another woman while you stayed quiet?

“If you’re looking at the poster and you’re joking among friends that that looks someone you know, we want to hear from you,” says Dugal. “It’s important.”

So are any of Dugal’s friends going to call in a tip about him, given his resemblance to the sketch?

“I can seriously say with a straight face that I wouldn’t mind,” says Dugal. “In fact, I would encourage that. It’s as important that we’re able to rule people out as it is that we’re able to find the person responsible. Because it’s the process that’s going to work that’s going to lead us to the person who’s responsible.”

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